Not only has our forest management and harvesting changed over the last century,
but also how we process the wood and engineer improvements into
wood products, further expanding the possibilities of wood as a resource.
With log yield maximizing strategies came the 2x4,
as well as the process of peeling logs for veneer production.
Veneer lumber is used in both plywood and engineered beams. Logs can be chipped
down and used to create high-strength OSB panels and I-joist web material.
Today's processes utilize 100% of the logs,
with none of the material going to waste. Improving our processing techniques,
enables better performance out of lower quality wood and uses less wood fiber.
For over a decade light wood frame mid-rise buildings have been flooding
the US residential multifamily market. From high-end downtown locations to the suburbs,
these buildings have been providing housing for thousands of families.
It is in this market that engineered wood products and especially SCL or
Structural Composite Lumber is providing cost-effective structural wood solutions,
addressing the low transfer and span requirements demanded by today's consumer occupants.
However, it wasn't until just recently that after a gap of over 100 years,
that mid-rise buildings are now allowed back within the province of British Columbia.
We're very excited about mid-rise construction coming to Canada, we think it's long overdue.
We've been supplying projects in the US now for many many years,
through that we've developed a lot of expertise on how these buildings go together.
Now with that coming to Canada and specifically B.C. we're well positioned to provide the technical
support and the products that the market needs to construct these types of buildings.
This construction form provides an economical solution to rising land and construction expenses,
to reduce building time and competitive material costs.
Decades of suburban growth has resulted in increasing costs for local governments, when
faced with providing infrastructure and services such as streets, water and waste management.
Sustainable densification through taller housing projects addresses this very issue and using
wood frame mid-rise construction for infill projects, be they in cities or in suburban
town centers, can greatly assist in creating sustainable communities and neighbourhoods.
I think for mid-rise construction, builders have realized that it is an affordable way to
build. Land is at a premium in this province, we know that there are other provinces such as
Ontario where land is it's a large premium as well, so it's all about getting the most amount
of units you can within the land size you have to build within, so we see here builders that
are very prevalent in multifamily going to six storey construction, recognizing that that gives
them more units and really builds the density that large cities like Vancouver so badly need.
But make no mistake, these structures are designed differently than low-rise
buildings and an integrated design team approach is strongly recommended,
to address all of the necessary nuances when it comes to these taller buildings.
A perfect example of this is found in Library Square located in Kamloops, British Columbia.
So this is a six storey structure, with five levels of wood, over one level of concrete.
The one level of concrete houses 20,000 square feet of library and about 9,000
square feet of retail space. Those uses wouldn't happen
in an all six storey wood frame building without the support of the concrete level,
that acts as both structural and fire protection, to the rest of the units above.
Right yeah we've seen many examples of this just south
of us in Washington, Oregon and even California.
When we designed the building we designed it as a steel and concrete building,
but with the downturn in the economic condition in 2008,
we had to look at other means to go ahead and get the building on.
We were fortunate that BC Building Code changed and allowed us to go to wood.
So was your change based solely on economics?
I think you're going to find that these type of projects, especially in urban environments
where housing is in short supply and there's a demand for densification,
that the sustainable and prudent way to design a building of this type is to go to wood.
There must have been some design challenges, how did you deal with them?
The code allowed us to go to six storeys in wood and there clearly
were some restrictions that we have to go ahead and look at.
The first of them would be that the six storey top floor couldn't be more than 18 meters above grade.
There's a building requirement, a building area requirement for not more than 12,000 square feet
and then there are the issues that we technically have to deal with in terms of shrinkage and some
of the ways that we dealt with that were to keep as many of the products of the structure in wood,
for instance our elevator is in wood, the joists are engineered wood joists, the frame system itself we
treated in a controlled environment and brought it on-site so it had very low moisture content.
Were they prefab panels?
They were prefab panels and they were brought on-site, they only had about a 10 to 12%
moisture content and that served us very well. Decks are also important to look in because they
were loaded on a post and beam system, we have to make sure that they shrunk
in accordance with shrinkage of the building. So they started with a steeper slope and then
as a building shrunk, so too did the decks to give us a positive slope at the end of the day.
So do the units vertically stack?
We did stack the units vertically and there's some very good positive effects for that,
by doing that certainly all the building services that are in the building,
such as plumbing and piping, sprinkler systems and
even the structural tie rods for instance, all aligned in a good vertical manner.
Now you mentioned sprinkler systems,
I understand the requirements now for this type of building is NFPA 13.
When we're dealing with a low-rise building you can go to NFPA 13R.
In this case we have to jump it up a notch and go to NFPA 13.
The requirements there of course is that the sprinkler system had to cover all of
the rooms in the building, not quite the same as in in low-rise building.
The piping system had to be increased and then certainly we're looking at penetrations through
the firewalls and through the demising walls, that also have to be looked at.
We were fortunate to go ahead and have a very good code consultant and fire
consultant on board, that assisted us in all of those penetrations.
Also the code change mentioned the exterior cladding and it's required for it to be
non combustible, how did you tackle that issue? You're right the code does require non combustible
cladding on six storey buildings. There are limited choices on that, in this particular
building we went with stucco for a good portion of it and we accented it with brick.
Light wood frame construction has historically been the most
economical way to construct buildings. The material is in abundant supply and
can be sourced locally, it's easy to carry around on a job site,
so installation is quick and you have a large and reliable workforce to draw upon.
There's just way more trades available that work with wood, than that work with steel.
The low-mass wood wall and floor assemblies also reduce the substructure's foundation needs,
along with its associated impacts in the environment, budget and schedule.
The phasing aspect of wood frame construction, along with the densification attributes of
mid-rise construction, allow developers to build housing stock, while limiting the
longer-term risk commonly found with high-rise buildings, which could take years to build out.
Our project is a mixed-use project with the library on the ground floor.
When we looked at going with wood and the code changed, we thought that was excellent
because we knew it had been done in the States. Economically, there's an overall cost difference,
there's a time margin and time is money in this business, and the fact that we used wood
we just molded right through. We actually got it that people are moved in and we're finished.
The setting is really nice for the people with the shopping center across the way, and the
building is economical and the view is superb. One of the benefits is that your higher floors
sell better and everybody wants to be on the highest floor, so we're getting,
well extra sales volume because we're selling the higher floors at a premium.
So you got a view regardless of which side of the building you're on and people are buying
it for what they see. We've had nothing but
positive comments about the project. As to who to get on board, you need
everyone on board first of all, the design team, the city, anyone in the approval industry, you've
got a bank to convince, but there's others like the realtors need to be convinced, the marketing
and their marketing, which impacts the financing. I know this for sure that if we were doing another
six storey building we wouldn't even consider steel, we would be going straight to wood.
We have a very good working relationship with all of our construction industry, in the city
of Kamloops and we all work together because is a team approach.
It's not just them or us, it's us, all of us working together building a better city.
To the best of my knowledge, we had nothing but success in this project because it worked
out the way we planned, and because this is the first project we had where is a six
story wood frame construction of a building was being proposed in the City of Kamloops,
so we were looking forward to the final results. Our team worked very hard on this from day
one and we wanted to make sure all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed.
One of our concerns was the safety on the job site, and we made sure that all
the safety aspect is looked after during construction and we brought that to the
attention of the developer and general contractor. Our fire department was also providing them enough
information so they don't run into any roadblocks. The biggest help we received at that time,
because it was new, unique, and the help and assistance we received from the Canadian Wood
Council representative, that was great, because they kept working with us and assisting us,
if there was any questions. When you start a project,
have everybody sitting on the same table so they all can hear what's happening and making sure
that they are ready to work on the project, and if there is any concerns or questions
then they have first-hand information, instead of getting it from third party.
So some of the precautions before a project gets going, you know for me was to just involve the
building department, involve your fire department, go over the building, the site, the plan,
involve everybody on every the step of the way, so if something is, or you catch something or we see
something coming up that may be a problem. If we can address it before they get to it
so it's just good communication amongst all those departments, and I think that
will probably alleviate a lot of concern or problems, before they actually get there.
You know I just want to add that during this project we really did have a really good
relationship with Tri City Contracting, Tom McNeil, the project manager there and our ability to phone
him at any time, or our ability to have our crews access the site to see how the project is coming
along. That went really well and in working with the building department here the city council,
we have a really good relationship so if we had any questions code wise,
we're able to confirm with them and just make sure everything was good and actually meet on
site with our building department, so that's overall...you know...it's a good comforting feeling,
that you when you work together with the companies that are part of the
building department, you can look at the issues and come to solutions.
All I can say that it was a great pleasure to work with the general contractor and CWC,
also with all the other teams players, our fire department, engineering team, code consultant,
they all pitched in and you can see the end result that we have a good project.
It's very hard for me to say what will happen in other provinces,
but if they have any questions or concerns, we'll be happy to share our experience with them.
I'm here with Tom McNeil, the project manager for Tri City Contracting,
the owner and developer of this project. Tom being that this was the first mid-rise
building, I'm sure most of the challenges or tasks were part of your responsibility,
ensuring that this building went up correctly?
Well it was quite a challenge actually, probably the schedule,
it was a very tight schedule at that point. I spent a lot of time at the beginning of the
project like, getting involved with the fire department and the City of Kamloops and you
yourself even, and a lot of good suggestions came from you, as far as fire safety and how
we were going to do things and we did incorporate a lot of everybody's suggestions into the design.
We're quite comfortable building them now and definitely had a good experience here.
Whether you're dealing with steel, wood or concrete I think
the principles of success are all the same. So somebody doing it for their first time,
I would definitely say do the research if you can and take it very seriously.
I can't see anybody building a four-storey anymore, if a six-storey is permitted,
just from an economic point of view. When you're marketing these housing like,
if you're going to put in a foundation you might as well go up as high as you're
permitted from the law of economics anyways, so I would definitely say they're here to stay.
At the end of the day, if the six-storey wood was a success, it was a success for us,
because we're an up-and-coming company, growing all the time and we'll definitely
be doing more wood building, so it's good for everybody in the B.C. economy.
Engineers that are comfortable in wood had no problem going to five and six stories.
We've broken ground now with five and six storey construction, it is no longer new and therefore
engineers and architects that are concerned about it, should really look at these projects
and see that they actually went up very well. We've seen and had good feedback from builders
and engineers, that have done these jobs already and they've gone off very smoothly.
Wood makes sense in this type of construction, it really does.
In many aspects, one of them is the lateral performance of the building because of the
redundancy of multiple members in this type of construction, there's great ductility and
excellent energy absorption in the frame, when it's experienced either wind or a seismic event.
We can cover a couple of examples in this situation right now, just directly above us
the builder elected to use engineered wood I-joists, as the roof framing material.
They've taken advantage of that for a number of reasons, oftentimes you need that longer span
to achieve the results that the architect has laid before the structural engineer.
So another example of a use of engineered wood product is right in front of us here,
above this window. They've used engineered wood as the headers or the beams over the windows,
that results in a much more stable frame. Just above that, there are a number of blocking
panels that are also an important part of the structural system here.
When we're up at this level, on the sixth floor there's a lot of wind exposure and
what's happening is this wall is going to be experiencing some wind port forces.
It's important at the top of that wall be braced back to something stable and
that's what we're seeing in this case. Once those loads reach that window header
then the next thing they must do is transfer down and around the window, clearly the glass itself
can't take the load and so primarily that header is working to transfer gravity loads from above,
down and through the framing system below. So here we are at the third floor and what
we're starting to see is the effect of loads being built up through the structure, if you
recall up at this level there was no framing like this before but now they have to insert framing.
There are three members here to transfer loads from upper levels, down into this structure.
If you notice there are three studs here to pick up that load, so typically what we'll
see in this joist cavity is a matching number of studs to the amount of studs that are below here.
Similarly when we're looking over on the joists, because the loads are starting to
build up, engineers may occasionally specify extra framing on the side of the joist, to bring loads
down and through to the structure below. By the time we reach the lowest level of
this framing the amount of cripples that we need to transfer the load has grown to four.
There are four of them here, matching the four studs that are used to transfer
the loads through the entire wall system. At this level to deal with the vertical load
transfer, we now move from having one squash block on one side of the joist,
to having a squash block on both sides of the joist and that's just purely to
deal with the enhanced vertical loads that are coming through the building.
By this point the vertical loads are substantial, so what we're seeing here
is the party wall between these two units has studs that are on a very tight on center
spacing, to deal with the vertical load. Just as importantly, in order to manage
that vertical load during the construction phase, there's blocking in between the studs to prevent
buckling, which is a critical safety measure when you're talking about loads like this.
Structural wood products are used to transfer loads and hold these buildings up, but to address
another nuance of mid-rise construction, we need to look at what holds these buildings down.